I like that Griffith’s two examples describe both him and Guts in the future. Like Griffith isn’t into world domination now, he just wants to be a king, but it sounds like that’s where the Falconia thing/Gaiseric’s giant empire parallel is headed.

And Black Swordsman Guts is both literally tempering his giant sword by infusing it with evil ghost spirits and shit, and also metaphorically honing himself a la Godo’s metaphor for him thru his dream of revenge and fighting tougher and tougher enemies.

and when he got his lofty noble dream figured out it was inspired by Godo being a blacksmith

but at the end of the day both go hand in hand with self destruction so like Griffith was right on the money here